On the Subject of Ceramics on Façades

On the Subject of Ceramics on Façades

On the subject of ceramics on façades, what comes to my mind first is Renzo Piano’s IRCAM building in Paris. I used to visit Paris for a while very often. Actually, I was very surprised when I saw this building. Of course, façades of many buildings have been covered with materials like ceramics through centuries. This is nothing out of the ordinary, but I was very pleased when I saw the functioning of this through Piano’s tectonic language. The reason was very simple, as a modernist architect, it was something that would always give me a hard time to bond and process a material on the façade using a sort of “glue” but here, a new technique was employed by a method reduced to the essence of the material which was quite a new approach at the time. The method we call “Rain-Screen” allows rain water to go behind the front wall. Therefore, the gaps between ceramic and steel load bearer on the front wall are left void. The obtained result is a very elegant appearance and indeed, the façade allows us to decipher how it has been built. But the greatest advance of this approach was that a red colored material we call terracotta could be used on the exterior in such fine detail. Use of a moderate material with steel which has harder and sharper lines is very attractive for me.